Archive
June 14, 2009 - June 20, 2009
Saturday, June 20, 200920 Jun 2009 06:26 pm Obama's Response
Did you notice how many times he invoked the word "justice" in his message? That's the word that will resonate most deeply with the Iranian resistance. What a relief to have someone with this degree of restraint and prudence and empathy - refusing to be baited by Khamenei or the neocons, and yet taking an eloquent stand, as we all do, in defense of freedom and non-violence. The invocation of MLK was appropriate too. What on earth has this been but, in its essence, a protest for voting rights? Above all, the refusal to coopt their struggle for ours, because freedom is only ever won, and every democracy wil be different: this is an act of restraint that is also a statement of pure confidence in the power of a free people. I share the confidence. I wrote a couple weeks back that something is happening in Iran. But it is not the only place where something is happening. The rejection of al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan; the ground-up election of Obama in America; and now the rising up of Iranians for freedom and civility with their neighbors: these are the green shoots of recovery from 9/11 and its wake. Empowered by new information technology, chastened by the apocalyptic conflicts of the last few years, determined to shift course away from civilizational warfare, the people of many countries are grasping for a new order and a new peace. It will not be easy; and it will not be short. But it is the only path worth taking. And these Iranians are now leading the rest of us. 20 Jun 2009 05:47 pm Roger Cohen In IranJust read it. He too saw this coming, and was vilified by the usual suspects for reaching for peace. If you want to read classic old media journalism by a reporter with passion and courage, his missive tonight is as good as it gets. Cohen proves the old media is not dead. May it rise again. 20 Jun 2009 05:20 pm Mousavi's Latest Statement: "I Followed Them"[Via Iranfacts] "In the name of God, the kind and the merciful Indeed god demands you to safe keep what people entrust in you, and to rule them with justice. [this a verse of Koran]
30 years ago, in this country a revolution became victorious in the name of Islam, a revolution for freedom, a revolution for reviving the dignity of men, a revolution for truth and justice. In those times, especially when our enlightened Imam [Khomeini] was alive, large amount of lives and matters were invested to legitimize this foundation and many valuable achievements were attained. An unprecedented enlightenment captured our society, and our people reached a new life where they endured the hardest of hardships with a sweet taste. What this people gained was dignity and freedom and a gift of the life of the pure ones [i.e. 12 Imams of Shiites]. I am certain that those who have seen those days will not be satisfied with anything less. Had we as a people lost certain talents that we were unable to experience that early spirituality? I had come to say that that was not the case. It is not late yet, we are not far from that enlightened space yet. I had come to show that it was possible to live spiritually while living in a modern world. I had come to repeat Imam’s warnings about fundamentalism. I had come to say that evading the law leads to dictatorship; and to remind that paying attention to people’s dignity does not diminish the foundations of the regime, but strengthens it. I had come to say that people wish honesty and integrity from their servants, and that many of our perils have arisen from lies. I had come to say that poverty and backwardness, corruption and injustice were not our destiny. I had come to re-invite to the Islamic revolution, as it had to be, and Islamic republic as it has to be. In this invitation, I was not charismatic [articulate], but the core message of revolution was so appealing that it surpassed my articulation and excited the young generation who had not seen those days to recreate scenes which we had not seen since the days of revolution[1979] and the sacred defense. The people’s movement chose green as its symbol. I confess that in this, I followed them. And a generation that was accused of being removed from religion, has now reached “God is Great”, “Victory’s of God and victory’s near”, “Ya hossein” in their chants to prove that when this tree fruits, they all resemble. No one taught hem these slogans, they reached them by the teachings of instinct. Continue reading "Mousavi's Latest Statement: "I Followed Them"" » 20 Jun 2009 04:52 pm Live-Blogging Day 8[Note: words in green are tweets from Iran. Words in black are mine in the US. The tweets should be taken provisionally until confirmed. - Andrew.]
(AFP/Getty.) 5.01 pm. We're done live-blogging for the day. I'd like to pay a little homage to my two under-bloggers, Chris and Patrick. I'm in awe of them. All we did, of course, was curate and aggregate and try to make sense of all the sources of information streaming into us via thousands. Tweets, emails, phone-calls, cell-phone photos, YouTubes, reports, data, opinion: our brains are fried and our souls inspired from absorbing and re-framing them all. Thanks too to ABC News Lara Setrakian, whose tweeting from Dubai we want to recognize. We gave no credit to all the tweets because their anonymity and immediacy is what makes them compelling. But Lara's were a fusion of old media reporting and new media technology. The biggest thanks, though, go to you, our readers, for your constant insight, opinion, tips, links, youtubes, and everything else. Really, my email in-tray is itself a CNN. I know you'll keep sending the emails; just know that we read and treasure and need them. This story is just starting and we will need your help to keep covering it with the diligence it deserves. One impression for today. Whatever happens, the Iranian people have already shown the world what a love of freedom means. Their spirituality, tenacity, wit, and compassion have shone through every moment. Whatever happens, they have proven a heroic nation for the 21st Century. We should honor them for this moment. And stay with them in the days ahead. Know hope. 4.22 pm. Conf'd Iran Fatemiyeh Hospital Tehran: 30-40 dead as
of 11pm; 200 injured. Police taking names of incoming injured. Call from Iran reports severe skin burns due to the unknown liquid dropped from helicopters. Bahman Ahmadi Amouee (Zhila's husband, journalist) also arrested Jila Bani Yaghoub, Femenist and Journalist arrested at
her home in Tehran a few Mins. ago. Some other Journalists arrested in Tehran. 3.42 pm. Tehran will not Sleep tonight! number of foreign embassies in tehran accepting
wounded. please contact your foreign ministries to open there embassy doors to
the wounded Zhila Baniyaghoob's (woman activist) home has been raided Haft Hooz SQ. is on fire, Protesters are so angry and
try to push back Bassij with Coctel Molotov... A Bassij Base burn by Protesters at Navab St. (South Tehran) eyewitness: young protester killed with bullet through
the head on Navab street clashes have intensified in tehran, shiraz and isfahan another person dead in Azarabayjan ST in Tehran
3.14 pm. according to same private listserv source, "People from all around Tehran are gathering to march into the city later at night." unloaded massive amounts of guns for more than 500 basijies whom had been sent there several hours earlier to confront the demonstrators. Reports from Tehran, Azadi St., Sanati Sharif University indicate that more that 10 helicopters landed inside the university,
Continue reading "Live-Blogging Day 8" » 20 Jun 2009 04:44 pm It's On NowHere is a round-up of reports from the ground and pundit analysis (we can't independently confirm eyewitness accounts, so read them with that in mind). Gregory Djerejian has a long, smart post analyzing today's events: Make no mistake, if a Tiananmen style crackdown ensues, we must condemn
it, and loudly. We must reappraise the timing and manner of going
forward negotiations. Iran policy will need to be The BBC has several eyewitness accounts: Today we tried to join the protestors in Azadi and Enghelab square, but
every route that we tried was blocked by the police. The plain clothed
forces are all Sepah (revolutionary guards), as most of them have the
Sepah badge on their clothes. In Sattar Khan I saw with my own eyes two
ordinary 40-year-old women being beaten severely with electric batons,
for nothing but raising their voice in protest. The Jpost also got an e-mail from Iran: Girls are extremely active in all these rallies (a little less in night riots where patches of young men are more visible). They courageously charge anti-riot police, chant slogans in front of them, lead the crowd, etc., but they are equally beaten too. The police seem to have no limit in the use of force. They are disproportionately violent. They don't use fire weapons, but they don't go easy on you with their clubs. They literally beat up protesters to death if they don't get rescued by fellow protesters or somehow break away and run. The level of brutality is exceptional, but it is amazing to see how people stand up to them. I heard from many witnesses that thugs were brought by bus from smaller cities to assist police in the crackdown...
Continue reading "It's On Now" » 20 Jun 2009 04:00 pm Quote For The Day
There is sobbing of the strong, And a pall upon the land; But the People in their weeping Bare the iron hand: Beware the People weeping When they bare the iron hand. - Melville. Live-blogging continues here. 20 Jun 2009 03:40 pm Tick Tock, Motherfuckers
A reader writes:
Continue reading "Tick Tock, Motherfuckers" » 20 Jun 2009 03:13 pm The President's StatementThe Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights. As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion. Martin Luther King once said - "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness. 20 Jun 2009 08:44 am The Regime's Thugs On The StreetsA snap-shot:
A reader writes: Listening to BBC Persian, one journalist reported from Tehran. He was reporting from "Yadgare Emam" highway and he was in Azadi Sq before. He was reporting Sepah and Special Gard and police are everywhere and they don't let anybody to get together. Heavy military presence everywhere. 20 Jun 2009 08:30 am The PlungeFrom the Guardian: An unconfirmed Tweet from a usually reliable source says Mousavi is
walking from his Ettelaat office to the Ministry of Interior and that
10,000 people are with him.
20 Jun 2009 08:26 am What They Now FaceThis is not from today. But it shows the raw brutality of the Basij: 20 Jun 2009 08:20 am Mousavi's MomentKarim Sadjadpour has some harrowing words to mark the occasion:
A reader passes on a phone call he just made to Tehran:
20 Jun 2009 02:17 am Live-Tweeting The Revolution: Week 1People of the world - Today Saturday 20 June 2009 - Iran will again make HISTORY - #Iranelection RT RT RT RT RT RT RT Hossein Obama - The world is watching Never seen my ppl like this before, so united, so strong, so wise. Stay together. Verde que te quiero verde - Lorca I can confirm Basij is on full alert & armed, but no visible IRGC activity reported from across the city yet "You may write me down in history--With your bitter twisted lies--You may trod me in the very dirt--But still like dust I'll rise." M.A. confirmed - Mousavi - SATURDAY is a big day for fighting fascism Only 10 hours left until the Iranian people finally disobey their dictator. History is watching. Let's make it proud. Now, all my life hurts [Google translation] Reformist and activist bloggers arrested / they are my friends I am worrying for them very much and also that the reformist leaders in jail are being pressured to give false confessions.
Continue reading "Live-Tweeting The Revolution: Week 1" » Friday, June 19, 200919 Jun 2009 09:00 pm "Skin In The Game"A reader writes:
Continue reading ""Skin In The Game"" » 19 Jun 2009 08:58 pm The Coming CrackdownFrom an anonymous writer in Tehran:
19 Jun 2009 08:37 pm Friday Night In IranKnow hope: 19 Jun 2009 08:36 pm Neocons And The UprisingSome thoughts on various splits and divisions. 19 Jun 2009 08:34 pm Before The Battle
“I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It’s worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again. All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I’m two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children…” - an Iranian blogger, with more courage than most of us will ever know. [Re-posted for obvious reasons.] 19 Jun 2009 08:33 pm Could Iran Do What Iraq Could Not?Rami G. Khouri seems to think so:
Continue reading "Could Iran Do What Iraq Could Not?" » 19 Jun 2009 08:29 pm Did They Turn The SMS Back On?Still unconfirmed; but this example of Chinese repression suggests a scary possible motive. This really is a battle of wills now. 19 Jun 2009 08:15 pm Zahra: A Campaign VideoVia the amazing NIAC, a fascinating insight into the woman at the heart of the green uprising: 19 Jun 2009 07:42 pm The Purging Of Froomkin, CtdJane Hamsher explains the long-running dislike of Froomkin in the WaPo newsroom because he actually called those in power to account, rather than constantly hedging and prevaricating and enabling them for fear of losing "access". His strong stance on the inherent corruption of Woodward-style journalism ruffled feathers as well. And his adamance on torture was a blast of fresh air in Washington, where people are too afraid to call their friends what they were: war criminals. Goldblog calls up Hiatt to ask him to review my post. Here's Hiatt's response: It is so incoherent, it's hard to know
how to comment. But I will try. He says I was acting on neocon orders when
we published a piece suggesting that Ahmadinejad may have actually had
popular support. But elsewhere I am being attacked for publishing ostensibly
neocon pieces criticizing Obama for not supporting Ahmadenejad's opposition.
It's hard to see how both could be true. Yes, they can, if you follow the ways of Washington neocons.
Continue reading "The Purging Of Froomkin, Ctd" » 19 Jun 2009 06:56 pm Why Are You Hitting Yourself?Matt Steinglass on the psychology of dictatorial bullies: When you make people accept a plausible fiction, you’re just winning
that one issue. But when you make them accept a lie which everyone
knows is a lie, you’re destroying their integrity, destroying their
will to describe the world as they see it, rather than as you tell them
it is. It’s the bully on the playground holding the weaker kid’s arm
and slapping his cheek with it, saying “Why are you hitting yourself?”
Like Vaclav Havel’s grocer hanging “Workers of the world, unite!” in
his shop window, once a person has acquiesced to something they do not
believe, and which everyone knows they do not believe, they become
complicit in their own oppression.
19 Jun 2009 06:52 pm Means To What End?Addressing "neo-conservatives like Krauthammer," Andrew Exum hits the nail on the head: [W]hat is your endstate? Where are we trying to ultimately go?
Are we trying to force a bloody crackdown on the protesters so the
world can see how horrific the regime is and will then approve tough
sanctions? Are we trying to start an armed confrontation with Iran?
Just tell me what you are trying to acheive through a more openly
confrontational stance and I'll listen. But for now, I suspect that one
of the reasons Krauthammer, Kagan & Co. are criticizing Obama's tactics
vis a vis Iran is because the majority of Americans would find their
strategic goals they hint at but never reveal to be bat-guano crazy.
Prove me wrong. Their end-state is war. 19 Jun 2009 06:46 pm Strange Happenings?An informed reader writes: There are unconfirmed reports that the block on SMS was removed in
Tehran...if true..I wonder why now? What kind of misinformation are
they planing to send out before the rally?? I am trying to confirm... it
is hard when everyone is asleep..
19 Jun 2009 06:35 pm As Healthcare FloundersI think this is how Tyler Cowen says, "I told you so": I'd just like to repeat a simple question I asked at the beginning of the Obama administration: which would you rather have, the fiscal stimulus or $775 billion in public health programs?
Even better, how about $300 billion in stimulus -- the immediate stuff like aid to state governments -- and $475 billion in public health programs?
At the time no one except a few progressives thought such a question was particularly relevant.
Note that the economy has seemed to stabilize, more or less, and well under ten percent of the stimulus money has been spent to date. Moving forward, if no further major programs will be put into place, how would you like to spend the rest of that cash?
Seriously.
And I don't mean this post as a poke at Democrats in particular. Conservatives, libertarians, etc. all commit their own versions of this error, at least if they find their way to power. The basic mechanism is simply that policy advocates underestimate the opportunity costs of the measures they propose, as they tend to see those measures as more "win-win" than others are willing to believe.
19 Jun 2009 06:21 pm Islamism EverywhereLarison again urges caution: [If] Mousavi’s forces prevail, who will have won? The Islamists or the non-Islamists? Silly question. For all the talk of democracy, the protesters are invoking the legacy of the Islamic revolution, which they believe has been betrayed, and they are employing the rhetoric of that revolution, which is nothing if not Islamist. Indeed, at the moment their hopes rest to a disproportionate degree with anti-Khamenei clerics who might decide to oust him. Should that happen, I hope that we will not be treated to some convoluted explanation that velayat-e faqih is actually a profoundly secular idea embodying the separation of religion and state, but given the commentary of the last few days I wouldn’t be surprised.
19 Jun 2009 06:16 pm Two IransFrom Ramin Jahanbegloo in the LA Times, from a few days ago: Ever since the first days of the Islamic Republic of Iran, there have
been two sovereignties in Iran: one divine and one popular. The popular
part of the equation is codified in Iran's Constitution, which calls
for the popular election of a president and parliament. Divine
sovereignty is believed to derive from God's will, as interpreted by
Shiite institutions that bestow power on the faqih, or supreme leader
-- currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Increasingly, the divine
sovereignty has been less about religion than about political theology.
As for the popular sovereignty, it has found its due place in the
social work and political action of Iranian civil society. The presence
of these two incompatible and conflicting conceptions of sovereignty,
authority and legitimacy has always been a bone of contention in
Iranian politics, often defining the ideological contours of the
political power struggle. The present crisis in Iran after the
presidential election is rooted in the popular quest for the
democratization of the state and society, and the conservative reaction
and opposition to it. Another factor distinguishing the current
political crisis from the previous instances of political factionalism
and internal power struggle is a deep-seated ideological structure
inherited from the Iranian revolution. (Hat tip: 3QD) 19 Jun 2009 05:57 pm A Tip For Would-Be FroomkinsA reader writes: Seems to me this sorry episode could serve as a cautionary tale to
other bloggers working in hostile ideological territory: call your IT
department, and have them build a widget that posts your traffic
numbers at the bottom of your column, week to week or day to day. Make
the data public, save the monthly numbers to excel reports, and expose
future attempts at sanitizing content towards ideological purity into
the open. In other words, shine a little light. These editors are such
backwards dinosaurs they won't even understand what you're doing until
the time comes to fudge up a reason.
19 Jun 2009 05:44 pm "Louder Than Ever"[Re-posted and updated] Above is another missive from the mysterious woman who has been recording Youtubes of herself with the background of Alla O Kabar. A rough translation: "Tomorrow is the Saturday of destiny....Tonight the Allaho Akbar is louder than other nights....Where is this place? A country were people have only God left to reach out to... This is a country where every night people's scream of Allah O Akbar is louder than the night before... Every day I wait till night time comes so I can hear this sound and see if it is louder than the night before or not ... My body is shaking... I wonder if God is shaking himself?" Her report is confirmed here:
19 Jun 2009 05:41 pm Seeing What Is In Front Of One's NosePeggy Noonan is in fine form today: To refuse to see all this as progress, or potential progress, is
perverse to the point of wicked. To insist the American president, in
the first days of the rebellion, insert the American government into
the drama was shortsighted and mischievous. The ayatollahs were only
too eager to demonize the demonstrators as mindless lackeys of the
Great Satan Cowboy Uncle Sam, or whatever they call us this week. John
McCain and others went quite crazy insisting President Obama declare
whose side America was on, as if the world doesn't know whose side
America is on. "In the cause of freedom, America cannot be neutral,"
said Rep. Mike Pence. Who says it's neutral? She does a good job explaining the impact of Twitter: Continue reading "Seeing What Is In Front Of One's Nose" » 19 Jun 2009 05:39 pm The Anti-Semite Card, AgainGoldfarb argues that my criticism of Fred Hiatt for firing Dan Froomkin and his increased publication of neocon boilerplate is a function of anti-Semitism, and that I am one with Khamenei in my belief that the "Jews" control the media. These vile smears are designed to police the discourse some more; and it is tedious to address them. But there is an enormous distinction between neoconservatives and Jews, and Froomkin is Jewish as is his most eloquent defender, Glenn Greenwald. My issue is with a specific brand of ideology that has revealed itself to be degenerate and corrupt these past few years, and immune to taking responsibility for its errors and being accountable for its failures. Rewarding such fanaticism and promoting the least intellectually honest, while canning the underdog blogger, is unhealthy in an important paper like the Post. And my concern is that one of the few people at the Washington Post who was ballsy enough to call them on it has been fired. 19 Jun 2009 05:17 pm Understanding The Neocons IIA reader writes:
And Strauss would be smiling. 19 Jun 2009 05:12 pm Striking The Right ToneThe president has been right to tread carefully, given poisonous American-Iranian history, but has erred on the side of caution. He sounds like a man rehearsing prepared lines rather than the leader of the free world. A stronger condemnation of the violence and repression is needed, despite Khamenei's warnings. Obama should also rectify his erroneous equating, from the U.S. national security perspective, of Ahmadinejad and Moussavi. Timing is everything. I think caution is better at this point. Gibbs still sounds very cautious. Obama's latest comment on Khamenei's speech: And I'm very concerned based on some of the tenor -- and tone of the statements that have been made -- that the government of Iran recognize that the world is watching. And how they approach and deal with people who are, through peaceful means, trying to be heard will, I think, send a pretty clear signal to the international community about what Iran is and -- and is not. The irony of neoconservative criticism is, of course, that many of them harangued Obama for his Cairo speech which was probably more influential on what just happened than anything the president could say now. (Photo: Obama today by Saul Loeb/Getty.)
19 Jun 2009 05:02 pm Understanding The NeoconsA reader writes: I had a conversation at lunch yesterday with a friend, a neocon Jewish American, that fascinated me. We were getting ready to get up from the table when he said, "Hey, wait a minute, do you want to talk politics for a minute?" We proceeded to discuss the events in Iran and at one point I brought up my amazement at the protesters' embrace of non-violence and their courage in the face of aggression. I said, "I wonder if this will be a lesson to the Palestinians. That perhaps if they renounce violence and embrace peaceful resistance they too could garner more international support for their cause, a la Gandhi." His reaction fascinated me. He got this very serious, dour look on his face and replied, "That's what worries me. The biggest existential threat to Israel is that the Palestinians will realize the potential for non-violence and embrace it." Continue reading "Understanding The Neocons" » 19 Jun 2009 04:53 pm 2003 AgainSome stragglers on the left do not seem to have gotten the message. Check out this defense of Ahmadinejad's victory and warning about "the birth pangs of Obama's new regional order." 19 Jun 2009 04:45 pm A Divider, Not A UniterMehdi Jami, "a well-known Iranian journalist, photographer, filmmaker and writer" comes out against Khamenei: [Khamenei's] biggest mistake was to say that he is closer to the current president than to the people. According to our constitution, our leader cannot belong to one political party or another. He will be remembered as a leader who split the people, ended his own leadership and became a tribal chief. He created divisions in the society.
19 Jun 2009 04:38 pm Basiji HuntingClemons passes along an e-mail from "a well-connected Iranian internationalist":
19 Jun 2009 04:31 pm The Purge Of FroomkinThe idea that is was budgetary constraints makes little sense. Froomkin was a free-lancer. Didn't they just hire Ezra? As for Hiatt's notion that interest in the column declined under Obama, can we have some simple data on that? In these days, we need not take an editor's word for it. The traffic stats have to be available. How do Froomkin's compare with other columnists? How much traffic did Froomkin bring in compared to, say, Kagan or Gerson? This data is available. Maybe Howie Kurtz or Andy Alexander could provide it. Oh, and by the way, read Greenwald on this. His opening quotes are priceless. 19 Jun 2009 04:25 pm The New York Times Uses "Torture"Well, they are describing the life of a golf caddie in the rain. And it's a quote. If the caddie were from the Bush administration, the NYT would change it to "enhanced precipitation techniques." 19 Jun 2009 04:02 pm The House Passes A ResolutionOnly Ron Paul voted against the measure, which said: Expressing support for all Iranian citizens who embrace the values of freedom, human rights, civil liberties, and rule of law, and for other purposes.
Resolved, That the House of Representatives— (1) expresses its support for all Iranian citizens who embrace the values of freedom, human rights, civil liberties, and rule of law; (2) condemns the ongoing violence against demonstrators by the Government of Iran and pro-government militias, as well as the ongoing government suppression of independent electronic communication through interference with the Internet and cellphones; and (3) affirms the universality of individual rights and the importance of democratic and fair elections. 19 Jun 2009 03:54 pm Obama Reaches Out To The GaysHe's looking for a meeting with various group leaders next week. Good move. 19 Jun 2009 03:52 pm Iran-I-AmSage Stossel's cartoon is a must-see. 19 Jun 2009 03:44 pm America: Britain's PoodleChannel 4's report on today's speech:
Ms. Hilsum explained that one part of the speech that has struck some Western listeners as curious, his harsh attack on the United Kingdom rather than the United States, is, in part, explained by how very influential the BBC’s Persian language television and radio broadcasts are in Iran.
Three decades ago that same station was central to broadcasting the Ayatollah Khomeini’s massages into Iran from abroad.
The BBC’s influence, combined with the British part in Iran’s history, Ms. Hilsum said, makes it “the only country in the world where people believe America is Britain’s poodle.” The BBC is using extra satellites to beam their coverage into Iran and foil the jammers. It's one of their finest hours, if you pardon the expression. 19 Jun 2009 03:44 pm Deja VuCrowley points to an overly optimistic statement I made in 2003 with regard to uprisings in Iran. He then writes: I definitely don't write this to take the p*ss out of Andrew, a friend whose optimism and idealism I really admire (and who turned out to be far more right about Obama, for instance, than I thought he would be). The current Iranian protests, moreover, are exponentially larger and broader than were the 2003 student efforts. Still, I can't quite shake the sense that we've seen this movie before, and that we know how it ends. I hope I'm wrong. What strikes me reading that post is that I sound exactly the same, except then I was railing at the clueless left (in Salon, no less) and recently I've been railing at the cynical right. You can see this as my own inconsistency, or simply the same position reacting to different circumstances and a different array of forces. In my own defense, my sense of a new opposition movement emerging in Iran in 2003 might have gotten the moment of "critical mass" wrong - but not the underlying idea. That now looks prescient, although, of course, I was far from the only one seeing it. 19 Jun 2009 03:04 pm The Good Neocons, CtdHilzoy goes after Daniel Finkelstein: [N]eoconservatives were not just insufficiently patient [during the run-up to Iraq]; they were reckless beyond belief, willing to bring down unspeakable costs on other people without bothering to weigh the possibility that their simplistic and unrealistic views of the world might be wrong. If Mr. Finkelstein wants to change his ways and become more "patient", power to him. To my mind, though, this column, with its equally simplistic (and insulting) view of his opponents, shows that he has not changed nearly enough.
19 Jun 2009 02:44 pm The Twitter Revolution, Ctd
Created by twitterer Iridium24 19 Jun 2009 02:13 pm Fallows On Froomkin
There's something fishy here: We all have heard the reasons that the press is under pressure by
forces not of its making. This is an example of a self-inflicted wound.
Are papers like the Post under suspicion for being too insidery and
old-media-y? How does it make sense get rid of an independent minded,
new media, presumably not-that-expensive, non-Washington-cliquey voice
on politics and the media and leave... well, the full opinion and media
lineup the Post is sticking with? Some people tell me that it's a
mistake to say that the Post's editorial page (and the weight of its
op-ed lineup) has "become" neo-con and establishment-minded under its
current editor, Fred Hiatt; the argument is that this is the Post's
long tradition, which its anti-Nixon crusade concealed. I don't know.
But I would have liked to have heard the argument about why Froomkin
was the necessary next person to cut.
19 Jun 2009 01:56 pm Quote For The Day III
"With the sacking of Dan Froomkin, I've given up on even looking at the Post. For a long time, I mostly read it to make fun of their OpEd clowns, but they've just gotten too ugly and vicious to laugh at anymore. It's like reading a spell-checked Free Republic," - a commenter on Joe Klein's column, exposing the ignorance and arrogance of Krauthammer and Wolfowitz. 19 Jun 2009 01:44 pm Obama's Gay Rights Clusterfuck, CtdAn outright refusal from Obama's DOJ even to meet with lawyers litigating two DOMA cases:
Either there is some bad miscommunication going on or the word has come down from the White House to cut off contact with those advocating equality and do what they can to oppose them. Obama increasingly appears not just two steps behind his supporters here. He is ten steps behind and moving in the opposite direction. In the end, you get this overwhelming impression: they just want us to go away. And you know what? We don't want invites to White House parties. We want an end to being treated as second class human beings.
June 14, 2009 - June 20, 2009
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